Ensuring a supply of potable water has been a frequent concern in many locations. Further concerns arise about the environmental impact of the disposal of contaminated water.
Conventional water treatment techniques for such purposes as, for example, municipal water treatment and/or obtaining potable water from sea water are known and are successful in many instances. However, some current activities show those techniques to have limited cost effectiveness.
For example, mining with water used to fracture rock or shale formations to recover natural gas (e.g., in the shale regions in the United States and western Canada including, but not limited to, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Ohio) requires a very large amount of water input and a significant amount of return (flowback) water that contains a great deal of contaminants and impurities. In order for this flowback water to be used in an environmentally responsible manner, it needs to be relatively free of contaminants/impurities. Water used, for example, in natural gas well drilling and production may contain organic materials, volatile and semi-volatile compounds, oils, metals, salts, etc. that have made economical treatment of the water to make it potable or reusable, or even readily and safely disposable, more difficult. It is desirable to remove or reduce the amount of such contaminants/impurities in the water to be re-used, and also to remove or reduce the amount of such contaminants/impurities in water that is disposed of.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the above-identified problems.